Surveillance systems employing digital video cameras and/or audio input devices are well known. In a typical system, some or all of the video and audio signals are provided on video screens and via speakers for monitoring by security personnel. It is also known to record some or all of the signals either locally or in a remote storage device. Existing systems perform local rate control for in each edge device. The standard methods may perform optimization locally for each camera or encoder and may adjust processing parameters, such as compression ratio and bit rate based on local conditions and/or detection of predetermined events. As the number of video cameras and the number of end-users grow, local rate control is insufficient for optimization of large network-based surveillance systems.
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